She did not care. The charcoal was warm in her fingers, the sun was soft on her face, the children were napping inside, and the silence was the good kind, the kind she chose rather than the kind that was imposed on her.
She had spent three years in silence that was not her own. Gordon’s silence. The silence of locked rooms and counted meals and the careful, measured absence of human warmth.
This silence was different. This was the silence of an afternoon in a garden with the sun on her skin and the sound of children breathing softly through open windows. This was the silence of choice.
She thought about Edward. She tried not to, but failed. She always failed. She had been failing at not thinking about Edward since the day he had walked into her auction and everyone in the room had gone quiet.
She thought about his hands on her face at the altar. The way he had saidlove,as though he were making a report. A fact. A certainty. She thought about the kiss on her palm, the way his mouth lingered, and the way he had left afterward, closing the door with a softness that was worse than slamming because it meant he was being careful, and his carefulness was driving her mad.
She thought about what she wanted, not what was safe. Not what a widow of her station was supposed to want. But what she actually wanted.
She wantedhim. She wanted his mornings, his evenings, his ridiculous refusal to dress according to fashion, and the way he hummed when he thought no one was listening. She wanted to wake up to him. She wanted to fight with him, make up with him, grow old with him, and watch him let children put beetles in his pocket for the rest of her life.
She wanted to be a mother. The yearning had crept up on her like dawn, slow and then all at once. She wanted a child withhis green eyes and her stubbornness. She wanted a house full of noise and mess and the kind of chaos that came from love instead of fear.
You have been through worse, my girl. Just breathe.
She put the charcoal down. Closed the sketchbook. Watched the afternoon light move across the garden.
Inside, she could hear the children stirring. Ruth was reading aloud to someone, her voice clear and steady, the confident diction of a girl who had read more books than most adults and intended to read many more. Horace was awake. She could tell because there was a small shriek followed by the sound of something being dropped. William was probably looking for trouble. Thomas was probably looking for Horace.
She remembered the afternoon on the lawn. The way he had knelt on the ground to talk to Horace at eye level. The way he had let William beat him in a race with such convincing effort that even Valeria believed it until she caught his smirk. The way he had listened to Ruth read with the same attention he gave to everything, as though her words were intelligence reports and he was parsing them for hidden meaning.
She remembered thinking that he had a father’s hands, patient and steady and built for holding. Even though he said he did not want to be a father.
The memory hurt. She pressed her palm to her chest and breathed through it the way she had breathed through threeyears of Gordon. In. Out. Steadily. “You have been through worse,” she told herself.
“Ye have,” a familiar voice said from behind her, low and rough. “But I am sorry I added to yer pain.”
She did not turn around. She sat very still, with the sun on her face, her hands in her lap, and her heart hammering against her ribs. She had not heard him approach. She never heard him approach. He moved like smoke, like shadow, like a man who had spent twelve years learning to arrive without being noticed.
She would have to tell him someday that sneaking up on his wife in a garden was different from infiltrating a foreign embassy. Someday, when she was not so angry and so relieved and so frightened all at once.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked.
“Long enough to see that tree. It’s terrible.”
She almost laughed. Almost. “It’s an apple tree.”
“Is it?” He paused. “It looks like a mushroom wearing a hat.”
She did laugh then. A short, surprised sound that escaped before she could stop it.
She hated him for making her laugh when she was trying to be furious. She hated him, and she loved him.
The two feelings sat side by side in her chest, and neither would give way.
“Please join me?” She scooted over.
He sat beside her, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him without touching him. He smelled of horse, sweat, and the faint sharpness of soap. He had changed his shirt. His knuckles were freshly bandaged.
“You’ve been boxing,” she noted.
“Yer brother is very persuasive.”
“John hit you?”
“He tried. He succeeded once.” He paused. “Twice, actually. It hurt both times.”
